User blog:LexsJB/Writing for Rainbow Magic
Hi How are you? I'm alright thanks. I don't mean to throw another blog at your face in less than a week but as a frequent user of the wiki, my first thought when I find out something about the series is sharing it here! A couple of weeks ago, I spent my weekend noting down who wrote each fairy book for the Daisy Meadows page! It took quite a lot of effort and when I finished, I wanted to find the authors' websites/profiles too. So because I'm a pretty curious person, I was actually brave enough to email Narinder Dhami and Sue Mongredien on what happens in the fairy factory. So these are basically the questions I asked them. 1. When and why did you stop writing? 2. What's the process behind character creation? 3. Do you keep up with the series? Narinder Dhami Her responses were telling. I don't think she'd mind me writing this here but if she gave this information to ME, surely it's not that confidential. I've put parts in bold that are interesting. 1. "I was only one of a group of writers and my last book was, I think, Roxie the Baking Fairy. I was not asked to do anymore after 2014." My first question if I were to reply is "why weren't you asked" but that's way too personal. 2. "The plotlines were given to the authors by the publisher, and then it was pretty much up to individual authors to fill in the gaps. This tended to be filling in characters, adding humour etc as the plotlines were fixed." So now we know why pretty much all the fairy adventures follow the same pattern - the authors don't have much creativity. They're given stuff to work with but they don't come up with the ideas themselves. Who knows who actually does? 3. "I believe RM finished only a couple of series after I stopped writing for it." It certainly hasn't finished because there have been (and will be) 8 series after the Magical Crafts Fairies. However, because she "believes" it's finished, it may mean she was told but doesn't actually know for herself. Or on the other hand, it could just be the way she writes. That's my English language analysing interpretation. Sue Mongredien Her responses were a little longer which is very nice of her. "I'm glad you enjoyed the Rainbow Magic books when you were younger! It's lovely to hear that they played a big part in your childhood, it's the nicest compliment to receive as an author. In answer to your questions - 1. I haven't written any of the Rainbow Magic books for some years now. I had always juggled writing them with writing my own children's series as well as writing novels as Lucy Diamond (yes, the pen name came from Lucy the Diamond Fairy!). When my Lucy Diamond novels began to take off, I was asked to write two in one year and time was really squeezed. I had written over fifty of the Rainbow Magic books by then and felt like taking a break, so decided to step back from the series in order to focus more on my own work. 2. I've met a number of RM authors over the years - I'm friends with Linda Chapman and Narinder Dharmi, but we never worked collaboratively in the way that you suggest, unfortunately. The books ran on a tight schedule with the publishers coming up with storylines, character and design in-house. 3. I don't keep up with the series - my children are too old for the books now, and I'm writing other things. I'm always really proud when people say to me that their children became book-lovers through the RM books, and that the stories gave them confidence as readers. I've also had a lot of beautiful letters and pictures sent to me over the years which has been lovely!" Final words I'm quite surprised that the authors don't come up with their own ideas, because otherwise the stories could be much more exciting if the plots weren't set by publishers who only have a mind for formulating the perfect collectable fairy series for money. But it's fascinating stuff anyway. I just thought I should share this with everyone for interest. Thanks for reading! LexsJBTalk 15:06, June 22, 2017 (UTC) Category:Blog posts